| Focusing on the turbulent period from the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War to the McCarthy Era, this thesis aims to provide a clearer understanding of the achievements as well as the limitations of the activities of the Institute of Pacific Relations (hereafter cited as the IPR), now widely regarded as the forerunner of today's international nongovernmental organizations. During this period, the IPR, led by American members, launched major research-publication programs, including the Inquiry Series, and sponsored several international conferences, most notably the Mont Tremblant Conference in 1942 and the Hot Springs Conference in 1945.; This thesis maintains that the most fruitful way to an understanding the IPR throughout this period is to examine its struggle for scholarly objectivity. Distancing itself both from "pure academic, ivory-tower specialization" and political propaganda, those Far Eastern experts who gathered around the IPR struggled hard to make their expertise - their knowledge, information and ideas - relevant to contemporary political issues. In so doing, they espoused the concept of nonpartisan, scholarly objectivity as the guiding principle of their activities. By positing the concept of scholarly objectivity as the center of analysis, this thesis shows the way in which the IPR principals, especially the American members, struggled hard to apply this principle to analyses of hot and controversial issues of the time, including the future of the Western colonial empires and the post-war treatment of defeated Japan.; Maintaining a balance between scholarly objectivity and value judgments, and between the promotion of impartial social scientific knowledge and the expression of political opinion proved to be an immensely difficult task for the IPR, however. Critics as well as political enemies of the IPR seized upon the difficulty inherent in the activities of the IPR to launch politically-motivated attacks on the IPR, arguing that the principal members of the IPR violated scholarly objectivity, misleading the organization toward pro-Communist ends. This thesis also evaluates the relationships between the IPR and other societal actors, including U.S. Congressional committees and the Rockefeller Foundation, the IPR's most important financial benefactor, suggesting several lessons derived from IPR interactions with these actors. |
